Haymarket Memorial

The Haymarket Memorial stands on Randolph Street near Des Plaines Street in the West Loop of Chicago, Illinois, close to where a labor rally took place on the evening of May 4, 1886. Workers and anarchist speakers had gathered in the Haymarket Square to protest the police killing of strikers the day before, during a national campaign for an eight-hour working day. As police moved to disperse the crowd, a bomb was thrown into their ranks. It killed a police officer, and the ensuing gunfire killed and wounded other officers and civilians. Eight men, mostly immigrant anarchists, were convicted in a trial widely criticized for its lack of evidence tying them to the bomb. Four were hanged in November 1887, and in 1893 Illinois governor John Peter Altgeld pardoned the three survivors, citing an unfair trial. The affair became a milestone in the international labor movement, and May Day, observed as International Workers' Day in many countries, commemorates the events in Chicago. The present memorial, a bronze sculpture by artist Mary Brogger unveiled in 2004, depicts a speaker's wagon of the kind used in the rally, with figures suggesting the crowd, and a nearby plaque explains the history. It is a modest outdoor monument rather than a museum, and its approach is to mark the place and prompt reflection rather than present a full exhibition. The site, in the Haymarket neighborhood near Fulton Market, has been recognized as a Chicago landmark. The graves of the executed men are at Forest Home Cemetery in nearby Forest Park, where a separate monument was erected in 1893. Visiting the memorial takes only a few minutes, and the site is always accessible and free. Visitors wanting more context can combine it with other labor-history sites, such as the Chicago History Museum, or with a stop in the restaurants and shops of the West Loop.